Cold Reception
by Vivicarious
Summary: Ashley finds something she would have never expected in the hellish cold of wartime Poland. WWII, Spashley style.
1. Chapter 1

This is a story adaption from another literary forum I read, fitted to Spashley. The backdrop of World War II gives it some dark themes, but the author did wonderfully in striving for realism and factual depictions of the harsh realities of the war. I should warn you the subject matter may be disturbing.

Don't own anything. Credits to CET for the story.

* * *

Ashley Davies lay still in the quickly deepening snow. Her white camouflage parka and neutrally colored trousers blended perfectly with the landscape, rendering her nearly invisible in the pale evening light. She peered into the thickening gloom around the edge of a burned out tank track. It had been thrown from a German machine after Red Army artillery had found its range early that morning. The monster Panther tank lay a few yards away, its blackened turret was askew and soot marks could be seen at the hatches where the infernal fires had found an outlet. A burned corpse hung out of the top hatch and smoke still curled from the fires that had raged within. The heat of those fires had long since dissipated, but the huge mass of metal made a solid windbreak.

The snow had been falling since midday and had slowly blanketed the blasted landscape, blurring the sharp lines of shell craters and softening the outline of charred trees. Bodies too lay under that snow. Faceless men who had died in this little corner of hell and whose relatives would never know how. When Ashley had taken up her position the area looked like pictures she had seen of no man's land from the Great War. Now it reminded her of home. Home. Time and horror had so shattered her perception that the very word sounded alien to her.

One hundred yards down range five men huddled next to another tank. This was one of the mammoth Tiger II's and the men steadily fed wood into a fire burning under it. The fire was to heat it up so they could start the engine in the morning. The frigid weather made oil freeze and they did not have the fuel to run the engine all night anymore. Once they had been the invincible juggernaut of Hitler's Third Reich, now they were reduced to a decimated remnant of the glory days. Ashley caressed the wooden stock of her rifle and rubbed the snow off of the sights. The rifle was special to her, almost like a lover. It was a German Mauser model 98K with a Zielfernrohre 39 scope. With it she had killed over seventy Germans since the red army entered Poland in late January.

It was an impressive score for any sniper, but Ashley would never appear in the newsreels in Moscow. She would never be called a hero of the Soviet Union. Ashley held no rank in the Red Army, not that the Germans would have cared one way or the other as they did not recognize Red Army rank among partisans. She received no funding or training from the NKVD. She did not fight for Stalin, for Communism, nor for a commander, she fought for mother Russia. For mother Russia and her personal vengeance. Vengeance for her lost family, vengeance for her slaughtered village, vengeance for the brutal loss of her virginity, but most of all vengeance for her loss of innocence.

_When Germany surprised the Red Army and swept across Western Russia in 1941 Ashley had been a mere child of sixteen. She had stood silently with the rest of her village as the German army entered. There had been a great deal of fear of the Hun among the elders, but those fears had proved to be unfounded. The officers and men of the Wehrmacht were polite if rather stern and rolled through stopping only to forage for supplies. Even in this they had not been brutal or overly zealous. Some milk, a few eggs, some bread, nothing many of the villagers would not have gladly given them anyway. She had seen the famed German general Heinz Guderian, but at the time the name had meant nothing to her. After the tanks came infantry in trucks and half-tracks. She had stood and watched them roll through the village, an endless parade of men in gray coats and black boots until her mother had forced her to come inside. The evening meal had been taken in silence, but it seemed to young Ashley that her parents were filled with hope and a guarded joy. They were Belorussians and some of the people in the village looked on the Germans as liberators. That had lasted until the next evening._

_Hours behind the real soldiers came the men she would learn to hate and hunt, the sadists of the Einsatzgruppen. Special action groups, autonomous, ruthless and sadistic they had begun immediately to round up Jews, communists and other "undesirables". What followed would remain forever burned into her mind, an orgy of rape, murder and senseless destruction. Her father and brothers had been shot and her mother dragged screaming to the bedroom by leering men. Even her tender years did not spare her and she lost her virginity to the first of many rapists that day. The last had been a cold man called Werner who seemed to have more feelings for his prized rifle than for any of the helpless people in the village. He did not even bother to lower his trousers. When he finished and rolled off of her Ashley had seized the Luger from his belt and shot him once through the temple. She had taken the rifle he had so carefully set by the door and had escaped into the night, a times dragging herself through the burning fields. She was bleeding badly, and her insides hurt horribly. Twice she threw up, but she finally reached the small cave where she and her brothers had played as children. She slept then, never sure for exactly how long. When she awakened it was dark and cold outside. It took her a moment to realize where she was and to have the horror of that day wash over her again. She could hear the screams of her mother, of people being machine gunned in the streets, the hoarse shouting of the Germans and the grunts of the men taking their turn with her. She cautiously went down to the stream and washed herself, removing caked blood and semen. It was still dark when she cautiously returned to her village. When she got there she found it was gone, a cold pile of ashes and unburied corpses was all that was left._

In reprisal for the killing of a German soldier the Einsatzgruppen Commander had given orders for the village to be burned to the ground and the inhabitants slaughtered. From that day to this she hunted Germans and killed them. Neither rank, nor age, nor branch mattered to her. She killed them all, from hiding, from long range. She gained a reputation for cold-blooded killing efficiency that earned her the title of the Snow Witch. The average German soldier feared her as much as the icy winds and freezing cold that had cost so many of them their lives.

She opened the bolt of her well-oiled rifle and inserted five cartridges, tossing the striper clip into the snow. When she slid the bolt home the first of the long 7.92mmm shells seated and the firing pin was primed. She sighted carefully and slowly breathed in, as she did so she set the cross hairs on the head of the German she assumed was the officer of the tank and gently squeezed. The heavy rifle bucked against her shoulder and she lost sight picture as she worked the bolt smoothly. She acquired a second target and had only a moment to record the surprised face of a young blonde man before the gun barked again. The remaining three dived for cover, but they were unsure of where she was and two took cover behind the tank, which only served to set a perfect backdrop for her.

Her next shot splattered blood and brains all over the side of the tank as it passed through the driver's ear. By the time she had worked the bolt again there were no Germans in sight. Ashley lifted her eye from the scope and peered ahead. The scope gave such a narrow field of vision that it was hard to acquire a target once they began moving. Soon her naked eye picked up a flash of movement near the tank. She immediately returned her eye to the scope and moved to where she had seen movement. She found the source, the second soldier had dived flat and crawled behind a rock, but he was now moving towards the tank again. Ashley relaxed and let him work his way closer. She could have fired then, but at this range shooting at prone target was a low percentage shot. Ashley could only collect ammunition from her vanquished foes. Cartridges were as precious as gemstones to her and she never wasted them when it wasn't absolutely necessary.

Like all hunters she knew her prey and his tendencies. Tankers would struggle to get back into the protective shell of their tanks and infantry would try to burrow into the ground. He would make a mad dash for that hatch soon and she moved her scope to cover the driver's hatch on the front hull. She was taking a calculated risk. The man might try for the commander's hatch in the turret, but she felt sure she had killed the commander with her first shot. She also expected the man to throw himself at the closest available route, which was the hatch on the fore hull.

It was a dangerous game Ashley played because if the man reached the tank he could simply blast away at the world with its machine guns and god help her if he managed to get the main gun into action by himself. The big 88mm high velocity cannon would not even have to be particularly close to her if he managed to fire it. Also, there was the fifth man. He had disappeared as soon as the shooting began, Ashley could ill afford to be watching the tank with such concentration that she allowed him to sneak up on her. A dangerous game it was, but she had played it many times since Stalingrad and she would play it many more if the fates permitted her to.

A flash of movement, her scope filed with gray and the sharp crack of the Mauser seemed to be one event. She pulled her eye from the scope to see the man fall backwards into the snow. He writhed around, shot through the spine, but the Russian woman sent no mercy bullet. She watched casually as he bled to death, her keen eyes now searching the increasingly murky ground for the fifth man. Over time she had developed a keen sense of what the world should look like. Her eyes darted over the landscape before her, but some small thing tugged at her consciousness. Something was slightly wrong, slightly out of place. In a moment she realized what it was and her eye returned to the scope. She carefully surveyed the camp through the magnified view until she came to rest on a large boulder. There, at the very edge she found what had been out of place. A boot, or more precisely, the toe of one.

Ashley could not tell if the boot was that of a man, or one that had been simply tossed there. She played back through her mind the hours she had spent watching the camp, at no time could she remember a man being near the boulder and only a fool would remove his boots in the icy cold. Still, this was the German army in retreat and who could say how many men had already passed over this frozen ground in headlong flight. The nearest town was over ten miles away and even though they were technically behind the front only a fool would think he was safe here.

Ashley calmly opened the bolt on her rifle, catching the last cartridge as it exited and placing it in her parka pocket. From her belt she took a second stripper clip and filled the magazine. A running man might throw many things away she reasoned; his gun, his pack, even his coat if the need were great enough, but only a dead man gave up his boots here. Feeling confident that the boot belonged to the last of the five soldiers she again sighted in and slowly squeezed off a round. The sharp crack of the rifle was followed by a flat thudding sound and a sharp scream. A man jumped up and for just a moment he was silhouetted against the lighter background of the trees. The rifle cracked again and the solid thudding of it striking was unusually loud in the crisp cold air.

So crisp that Ashley wondered if she had perhaps missed the man and hit one of the trees behind him. Her second shot had been rushed and she could not be sure she had hit the mark. She chambered another round automatically, but her mind was already going over the situation and her options. Four dead Germans and a probable fifth was more than a day's work for her. Not knowing if that fifth man yet lived the wisest course would be to pull back to her hidden camp and come back in the morning. On the other hand with the German army collapsing around her the odds of anything useful making it through the night were slim. Stragglers were everywhere, not to mention polish partisans, refuges and advance patrols of the first Ukrainian Front. Ashley was desperately short of ammunition and food. She also wanted the greatcoat off the first man she had shot because it would help in the long cold night.

Ashley had been very lucky and had survived the many mistakes she made when she first started on her personal odyssey of vengeance. Now she was a seasoned veteran of many campaigns. Rather than approach the camp she stood slowly and pulled on her almost empty haversack, which was another trophy. She carefully circled the camp keeping low and watchful for any movement. When she reached the other side of the camp she could clearly see the dead man who had been hiding behind the rocks. Still wary of a trap she closed in slowly, taking advantage of the natural cover and her relative invisibility in the gathering twilight. As she entered the weak circle of light cast by the dying fire she held her Luger in her hand.

The man behind the rock had taken her bullet in the side and it had passed clean through him. The pool of black blood beneath him was quickly becoming scummed with ice, but it showed Ashley that she had damaged his liver. Two others had taken head hits and were undeniably dead. Her second target was also dead; he lay face down in the snow in another pool of icy blood. The man she had shot through the back was still alive. Blood trickled from the corners of his mouth and ran down his face. His nostrils flared as Ashley stood over him and he painfully tried to speak.

"Schneehexe"

He was young, probably not even out of his teens yet. His face was handsome with a bit of blonde peach fuzz he probably called a beard. He had deep blue eyes that showed his fear and pain more eloquently than any words. Ashley hated the German enemy, but she was not a heartless killing machine, at least not yet. She knelt by the boy and as she softly spoke to him she brought the Luger to his head and killed him with a single shot. She was not often moved to mercy, but she still had feelings though she buried them deep. It was boys such as this, young men raised in the lies of the Fuehrer's Germany without a chance to know any better that she could still feel for.


	2. Chapter 2

The children of the Hitler Youth. Ashley felt a kinship to these soldiers because they too had been robbed of their innocence. While her ordeal had been a single brutal moment in time, theirs had been a slow process. They were as savage as any of the soldiers she had fought and often their atrocities drove her to rage, but she always remembered that they were not at fault; they had been raised to be this way. Denied access to information, spoon-fed the Nazi party and its twisted racial philosophy, kept away from other peoples, other ideas, trained to kill without compunction. They were victims too, even as they were the perpetrators of heinous crimes.

Ashley closed the dead boy's eyes and whispered a prayer for his departed soul. As she rose something moved near the tank and she whirled to face it. An ill formed shape lay near the front of the big tank. Ashley approached carefully; ready to fire is she sensed the slightest danger. The form was that of a person, covered in an old blanket. She knew that five was the number of a tank crew, yet in their headlong retreat it was entirely possible this crew had picked up another man. If it was a man he was small and hurt or incapacitated in some way because he did not stir again. Ashley reached down and caught the corner of the sheet and then ripped it off, aiming her pistol at the center of the body.

Her first impression was hair, long blonde hair thrown this way and that by the blanket being ripped off. Next it was the eyes, large, blue, and impossibly expressive. She was momentarily shocked to realize it was a girl. She wore only a thin shift and her hands and feet were bound. A filthy rag was wound around her head and she had several cuts and bruises on her face. She was obviously terribly frightened by the grim figure and the menace of the pistol. She groaned into her gag and shrank before Ashley.

The Russian woman threw the blanket back over the girl and turned on the bodies of the Germans, already she regretted her mercy shot. Trying not to think of the girl she clambered up the side of the tank and dropped into the dark interior with her pistol still at the ready. The interior stank of unwashed men, sweat, diesel and mold. Bolted to one wall was a rifle similar to her own. She removed it and tossed it out the driver's hatch. She found a belt of cartridges, which she threw over her shoulder and a second Luger, which she jammed into her waistband.

She also found food, old bread, a half of a cheese, some tins of meat and two bottles of wine. All of this went into her pack, along with a knife, 2 blankets, some medical supplies and a heavy coat. She smashed the instruments with the butt of the Luger before climbing back out.

Ashley moved from man to man, despoiling them with the callous indifference of long practice. She found a few papers, another pistol, and a curious flask, which held some schnapps. The officer's greatcoat was still in good condition and she took it after carefully cutting off the epaulettes and other symbols of rank and identification. She needed to be moving because her shots might have attracted unwanted attention, but her eyes returned to the girl under the blanket. An extra person to care for was not something she wanted or needed. The hunter always worked alone. She turned and started to walk away, but each step seemed to take a lifetime and she found herself glancing back again and again.

I can't just leave her, she thought as she turned and hurried back. The girl wasn't moving when Ashley reached her and threw back the blanket. She was still conscious, those big eyes still staring, but her lips were blue and she was shivering frightfully. Ashley pulled out her knife and those big blue eyes showed the girl's fear.

"I'm not going to hurt you, do you understand me?" Ashley grunted in Russian.

The girl nodded that she understood and Ashley breathed a sigh of relief. She spoke practically no Polish and very little German. At least the girl's understanding of Russian would help in communications until she could be rid of her.

Ashley cut the bonds holding the girl's hands and feet. She sat up and pulled off the gag, spitting out a mouthful of dirt. Ashley did not trust her, but she could tell the girl was freezing and was no threat for the present, so she went and stripped clothes off the Germans. Her shooting had ruined some of them, but she managed to get 4 pairs of socks, 3 trousers, 2 shirts, 2 uniform jackets, a coat and tunic top, along with a slouch hat. The smallest pair of boots would still be very large on the girl, but the extra pairs of socks just might be enough to allow her to walk without getting blisters. She returned and dumped them by the girl.

"Get dressed, quickly," Ashley said.

"I will not wear the rags of these barbarians," the girl said tilting her head up proudly.

"Freeze then," Ashley said with a shrug. The girl looked distastefully at the pile of stained clothing, but the wind was beginning to howl and she realized it was a matter of survival.

"Turn your back," she said. Ashley snorted derisively, but turned her back on the girl and walked to the edge of the encampment. It was dark now and she realized it would be a minor miracle if she could even find her camp. Already the swirling wind was picking up snow and visibility was down to a few feet. Presently the girl joined her. Ashley was hard pressed not to laugh and eventually gave in to the temptation. The girl looked like a child playing dress up and Ashley realized she had not laughed in what seemed an eternity.

The girl shot her a look that would have killed, but said nothing. Ashley started off into the snow and wind with a smile behind her scarf. The march was draining and before long the girl began to lag behind. Ashley slowed her pace, but soon the girl collapsed in the snow and just lay there without moving. Ashley trudged back to her and tried to rouse her, but she was unconscious. The Russian woman shrugged and heaved the girl up and onto her shoulder. She had worked on a farm until the war and heavy burdens were nothing new to her. An hour later she lucked into finding the small stream she had bathed in the evening before. It still took forty-five minutes in the nearly impenetrable dark before she found her camp.

Her camp was in a light copse of woods, where she had found an overturned polish tank. An obvious remnant of the Russian occupation of 1939 it formed a perfect windbreak and with a little work Ashley had built a lean-to that was very snug. She placed the girl on top of the small pile of blankets she used as her bed and then covered her with the blankets from her pack. Ashley next used some of the limbs she had gathered to light a small fire. Usually she would not risk a fire, but with the wind and snow she felt safer and the girl obviously needed the warmth.

She had planned to sleep, but with the girl occupying her bed and the danger of a fire she decided she would have to remain awake. Ashley leaned back against the tank and sank deeper into the coat. The lively little fire was kicked up by the wind and she could almost believe this was a camping trip with her father and brothers. As she reminisced about the life she had lived before the war she fed more fuel into the fire. Ashley did not know it, but she was coming to the end of her time as the angel of death. The hate inside of her had nearly burned itself out and the better instincts were trying now to overcome it. Her gesture of mercy had been the first victory of her better nature. The girl was a catalyst for change, but she did not know this yet.

Morning dawned dreary and pale, the snow continued to fall and was heavier now, great wet flakes that soaked into anything they touched. Ashley stood and shook off the flakes that had gathered on her coat. She walked to the edge of the trees and looked out, but visibility was so bad she could see nothing. She relieved herself and then returned to the fire. The Russian stoked the little flame and took out the single pot she carried for cooking. Rather than use water from her canteen she gathered snow and melted it until she had plenty of water boiling. She tossed in some heavy flour, one of the tins of German meat, a large sliver of the cheese and a few other odds and ends from her pack.

It cooked down quickly into a thick soup and Ashley ate it with relish. Hot food was a luxury she was almost never afforded by her solitary and dangerous life. Even the bread, which was several days old tasted good and she finished of her small feast with a shot of the schnapps. It was strong and fiery and she relished the warmth in her mouth after it had gone down.

"You're not very big for a Cossack,"

Ashley's head snapped around at the sound, she had almost forgotten what someone speaking without anger or fear sounded like. The girl was sitting up and staring at her with those deep, soft eyes.

"I'm no Cossack," Ashley said.

"I know. I'm trying to decide exactly what you are and why you have brought me here, wherever here is"

"My name is Ashley. I brought you here because I couldn't just leave you to freeze,"

"Ashley? Very well Ashley, my name is Spencer. What do you intend to do with me?"

"What an unusual name… But no matter, I will take you somewhere safe, perhaps Rovno," Ashley said as she shrugged.

"Safe?" the girl said and raised an eyebrow, "nowhere is safe in this world turned upside down," and then laughed bitterly. Ashley shrugged again.

"You would prefer I return you to the Germans?" The girl's eyes flashed then, showing anger as readily as they had fear.

"You say that as if the Russians are any different, but I know better. You are all intruders here and I have been subjected to the tender mercies of both swine," she said with a voice so filled with hatred and disgust that Ashley felt as if she had been struck.

They sat in silence for a long while before Ashley stood and walked to the edge of her camp again. The snow was worse and she could not even see the tank or her fire at a distance of less than twenty meters. She returned and sat back down, adding sticks to the fire.

"It is a bad day to hunt," she said out loud. She said it to explain to the girl, or so she told herself, but it sounded more like she was trying to convince herself of the fact. Ashley had gone out to fight in weather far worse than this, but somehow she did not want to leave the comfortable little fire or the girl with the flashing eyes. The girl sat in silence for a long time and then hesitantly spoke.

"I'm sorry I snapped at you. I owe you my life and should be grateful to you. I'm not used to kindness and have forgotten how to respond to it I'm afraid,"

"Until I found you I thought I had forgotten how to be kind,"

"I did not think you could forget that, ignore it perhaps but not forget,"

"You can forget." Ashley assured her, "Kindness becomes weakness and weakness means death. It isn't that hard. All of the conventions of society are unnatural. Kindness, mercy, faith, love they are all unknown in the animal world,"

"Yes, but they are what sets us apart from the animals," she aid softly. This time it was Ashley who retorted angrily.

"I would take the four legged animals over those that walk on two,"

Spencer seemed to be at a loss for words. She started to speak several times, but finally clamped her mouth shut and said nothing. Ashley took another swallow of the schnapps and then passed the flask over to the girl. She sniffed daintily at the flask then took a sip. Ashley burst out laughing when Spencer gagged and spluttered. He pretty eyes were watering and she coughed. Ashley took the flask back from her shaking hand and had another sip. She sighed contentedly as the warmth spread though her stomach and into her limbs. The snow was falling slower now and the merry glow of the red fire reflected off the old tank.

"Is there something to eat? I'm hungry," the girl said. Ashley immediately passed her the rest of the soup and a chunk of the bread. The girl looked at it doubtfully, but ate. Even here in the wild she ate daintily, with an elegant and refined manner.

"Thank you," she said when she was done.

"I can tell you are used to better. It's all I have," Ashley said. She was angered with herself for the apology, unsure of why she had made it.

"Perhaps once I was, but that was in a different world,"

"Tell me about it," Ashley said. She was feeling relaxed, content and slightly light headed. The girl's voice was pleasant. Her Russian had a strong polish accent, but it was almost musical to Ashley who had not shared a conversation with another human being in many months.

"Well," she said while looking at Ashley. When she seemed satisfied that the Russian woman really wanted to hear she continued, "My father and mother were both teachers. I was brought up in a very liberal and enlightened home. I knew I wanted to be a teacher too from a very young age. When I was old enough my parents allowed me to travel for two years before I made up my mind. I saw Vienna, Paris and Berlin before the Nazis took over. I went to galleries, the opera, saw museums and Cathedrals, read the classics. You cannot imagine the beauty that I found in those magical two years. I also discovered the nightlife, the cafes, bistros, clubs and restaurants. I discovered much about the world, and more importantly I discovered much about myself. I found there were clubs and publications for people like me."

"Poles?" Ashley interrupted.

Spencer began to laugh softly. Ashley was puzzled, but wanted to hear more. The girl's voice seemed to transport her to those wondrous places and Ashley felt a keen desire to see them for herself.

"How old are you Ashley?" Spencer asked.

"I do not know, I think twenty, but perhaps I am twenty-one,"

"Not so different from me then, but so many worlds removed,"

"What do you mean?"

Before the girl could answer Ashley heard the sound of movement outside the camp. She moved quickly and covered the startled girl's mouth with her hand. With her other hand she placed a finger over her lips. When the girl nodded Ashley released her and took up her rifle. She lay in the snow with the fire between herself and the sound and waited. Time moved slowly and the girl began to fidget uncomfortably, but Ashley remained as still as if she were carved in stone. She knew there was someone out there, knew it as instinctively as a wild animal could sense danger.


	3. Chapter 3

There were two of them, indistinct gray shadows in the gloom and they were moving carefully towards the camp. Ashley recognized them as Germans from their weapons, Schmeissers. One of them called out in German for Spencer to raise her hands and stand. The frightened girl looked to Ashley, who nodded ever so slightly. Spencer stood slowly and held her hands up. The two men advanced warily, while Ashley patiently waited for them to move to a point where she could see both. One stopped and leaned against a tree, perhaps twenty feet from where Ashley waited as the other advanced. Ashley calmly sighted in on him and waited for the second one to clear the edge of the trees. Through the scope she could tell he wore the black uniform of the SS. He also wore a long black coat and Ashley shifted her aim from his heart to his head, hoping she could recover the garment for Spencer.

She was watching them both now, but her attention was centered on the one in her sights. She followed the other's progress with her peripheral vision and the moment he was out of the cover of the trees she took up the slack and the rifle bucked against her shoulder. Even as she worked the bolt she yelled for Spencer to get down and the German started firing. The rifle bolt slammed into place and Ashley swung to the second man. Visibility was so poor that he had gotten too close to use the scope and she was forced to rely on the iron sights. The gun roared again, its crisp bark eclipsing the staccato hammering of the submachine gun. The Schmeisser fell silent and in that quiet there seemed to be no sound in the entire world. Ashley moved quickly to the second man, he was dead, the shot having taken him through the heart. She ran to her original target and ripped the coat off the corpse. She would have liked to search him more thoroughly, but she felt an impending sense of doom. As she raced back to camp she snatched up the sub machine gun as she passed the first German.

She tossed the coat and gun at Spencer's feet and hastily began to slam her few belongings into the haversack. Spencer stood there as if in shock.

"Put it on, hurry," Ashley whispered urgently. Out there in the fog voices were calling. Too many voices. Spencer mechanically put the coat on, but refused to touch the weapon.

Ashley snatched up the weapon and thrust it into the girl's hands. She shrank from it and Ashley lost control in her fear and slapped her hard across the mouth.

"Take it!"

The girl seemed to snap out of whatever trance she had been in. She took the weapon and Ashley bent and grabbed her rifle and haversack.

"I do not know what is happening, so do not ask me. We are in danger and we must get away from here. Follow me and do what I do. If I stop then you must stop. If I lie down you must too and if I tell you to run you must run as far and a fast as you can, do you understand me?"

"Yes, but I could never use this," she said holding the MP-40 awkwardly.

"I did not expect you too, but we walk among the enemy, in the clothes you wear you could pass as a small man at a distance in this snow, but if you have no weapon you will be immediately stopped and questioned," she said. The voices from the woods were becoming strident and Ashley glanced that way then back to Spencer.

"Our time is up, follow me,"

Spencer leaned forward and kissed Ashley full on the lips. Ashley was slightly surprised, but not too put off. She was used to people kissing in greeting and on parting. She smiled and then stood up and led off into the white nothingness.

It was a strange, white, almost ethereal realm in which they walked. Progress was slow and Spencer had to stay right on Ashley's heels or risk losing her guide. They moved slowly, Ashley trusting her senses to avoid the line of Germans. If they came near enough to hear one they stopped and waited for him to move on. Ashley slowly began to get a feel for this enemy. They were strung out in a skirmish line, sweeping slowly forward. The feeling of danger was heightened when she realized it seemed to be a search pattern. It took them well over two hours to traverse the field Ashley had passed over in less than fifteen minutes the morning before.

There was nothing to see, no landmarks of any kind and soon Ashley was lost in the seemingly featureless whiteness. She continued to avoid moving soldiers and soon she felt they had groped their way out of the trap. Now she began to concentrate on trying to get her bearings, but there was simply no way to do so. She was beginning to feel panic rise in her when a dark shape loomed up out of the snow. She shrank from it at first, but suddenly realized it was the demolished Panther she has used as a wind block. Her confidence returned as she treaded carefully towards the Tiger but it did not appear. When she found the boulder the man had been hiding behind she realized that the tank had been moved.

The door to the barn was hanging by a single hinge with over three feet of snow piled against it. Spencer was barely able to stand and Ashley could feel the cold sapping the last of her ebbing strength. She could not pull the door open but found she could push the damaged one inward enough to create a crawl space. She almost had to shove her shivering companion through and then crawled through herself. As she did so she pressed against the other door and a large drift of snow was dislodged from the facing, nearly covering her in heavy wet snow. She had to use her hands to drag herself inside and slowly, vehemently cursed in Russian as she shook the snow from her nearly frozen legs.

Spencer was shivering uncontrollably and her lips were blue. Ashley knew she had to do something quickly to warm her up. Above the ground floor of the barn was a hayloft. Ashley stared at the ladder with some doubt. She knew they had to get out of sight, but she was not sure her companion could climb. Ashley also felt that she was too weak to carry the girl, but she had no option now. She practically dragged Spencer to the ladder, the girl was not totally conscious and making her understand what Ashley wanted proved difficult. She finally seemed to grasp what Ashley was saying and woodenly began to climb. Ashley shouldered all of the gear, including the submachine gun and wearily started up after her.

The climb was sheer agony to her frozen limbs, but Ashley somehow made it. Now that they had at least a measure of concealment she knew they had to get warm. Ashley hastily stripped off her wet clothes tossing them into a corner. Spencer was past the point of understanding and Ashley stopped with her own disrobing and started to open Spencer's coat.

Ashley was a practical girl and she knew how to survive in the cold. The trick was to become neither too cold nor too hot, but to stay near the same temperature. She quickly stripped off the coat and the tunics that Spencer was wearing. When she came to the shirt she realized what had happened. The girl had started to sweat and it had formed a thin layer of ice on her skin. Ashley tore into her pack and threw two of the blankets down. She laid the other two on top, covered them with the greatcoat and then pulled them back. She practically ripped the girl's shirt off and started on the trousers. For some reason Spencer kept getting her hands in the way, almost like she was trying to stop her. Ashley swatted the girl's hands away and shucked both pairs of trousers and then pushed the shivering girl to her back. She ripped the boots off without even bothering to untie them and the tore the socks off. She then dropped her own trousers and tossed her shirt off. She sat and untied her boots noticing as she did so the strange look Spencer was giving her. Once free of the boots Ashley peeled off the long underwear she wore and moved to Spencer, she caught the hem of the girl's dirty chemise and whisked it over her head.

The girl's eyes held a dreamy, far-away look as Ashley picked her up and carried her to the blankets. She gently sat her down and then lay down next to her and pulled the blankets and coat over them. Ashley pressed her body against Spencer's and held her close. By now they were both shivering, but over several minutes their combined body heat began to warm the small space under the blankets. Ashley stopped shivering first, but she held tightly to Spencer until the small woman stopped shivering as well.

"Are you all right?" she asked finally.

"Yes," came the hushed reply. Ashley started to release her hold and roll over but Spencer grabbed her hands.

"What?"

"Nothing…Please… Just hold me a while," she said. Her voice was strange, small and scared. Ashley was confused, but she discovered she didn't really want to let go anyway.

"I will,"

The girl sighed and snuggled back against her. Ashley lay there listening to the whisper of falling snow the girl's soft breathing. The sounds were familiar and comfortable. The long walk in the snow with the tension and fear had put her body into an adrenalin overload. As that wore off she expected to be totally exhausted and fall asleep quickly, but she found that she was restless. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness and she became aware of the smells. Fresh hay was the strongest, but she could detect the smell of grains and of good black earth. It reminded her of home.

She began to become cognizant of the girl lying in her arms. Her skin was soft and warm, but exquisitely smooth to the touch. She could feel the soft globes of her rump pressed against her abdomen and the weight of Spencer's breasts resting on her arm. Ashley moved her head slightly and gently breathed in the scent of the girl's hair. It was fresh and clean and the soft locks tickled her nose. Spencer sighed almost inaudibly and wiggled back against her. Ashley felt an unfamiliar tightening in her stomach and it became harder to breath.

How long had it been? She wondered. When was the last time she shared simple human contact with someone? She had talked with other partisans in the early days, even stayed with a small group while recovering from a wound, but that had been before the NKVD took over. Now she had as much to fear from them as she did from the Germans. That last night at home, in the warm rope bed that she shared with both her sister? Had that been the last time? Possibly. She found it vaguely unsettling to discover that she didn't know.


End file.
